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31 January 2012

Canon in hospital

After the sad demise of my Canon 300D (see here) whilst practising with my new time-lapse gizmo I was looking around for another camera. Eeeekkk too pricey so I decided not to give up hope on the 300D. I took it today to the nearest thing I know to a hospital for sick cameras. Knowing exactly what the problem was - the auto focus mirror is not rising up out of the way when the image is captured because the tiny plastic pin has broken or fallen out - means diagnosis is easy and a solution quick to find.

Not sure if you can see what is going on in here - but the auto focus mirror at the back is only coming up about a quarter of the way - disaster

Solution 1 - Can find the pin that fell out (impossible)

Solution 2 - Get into the heart of the camera to fit a replacement (scarily drastic)

1 and 2 not really practical - seems like it is terminal for the poor thing. However - little ray of sunshine shone my way.

Solution 3 - If I don't want to use the auto focus function on the camera then all is not lost (and also open heart surgery will not be required). I can glue the auto focus mirror to the main mirror so when that swings up out of the way the auto focus mirror will be stuck to it and swing fully out of the way.

This may sound a little Heath Robinson and some would say auto focus has to be the best thing since sliced bread for jobbing photographers - but - I only want to use this camera for my time-lapse experiments. I will ALWAYS manually focus and make all settings manually before any captures so this seems like it will not be a huge hardship.

It is a lovely little camera and was my first introduction into DSLRs so I do not want to say goodbye to it - but if I can repair in a way that costs very little, doesn't damage the camera, means I can still use it for the thing I brought it out of retirement for - then I think I have a win, win, win, situation!